This Was Her Last Job
by kcatty
Summary: It's an OC story. I would be giving it away if I gave a plot summary, but let's just say that this is job is the straw that broke the camel's back. (Oxford comma alert. I realized I was using it early on and just decided to go with it. A handful of curses. I think the epilogue is cheesy, but I did write it, so I can't complain. Kudos if you catch the references to another show.)
1. Afternoon

She took the bus into the city on a Saturday afternoon. She sat in the middle of the bus, in a window seat, and stared out onto the traffic as they crossed the Hudson River from Union City.

"Meeting someone?" asked the man sitting next to her.

She jerked her head away from the window. "What?"

"I was wondering why you're going into the city on a Saturday afternoon, that's all," he responded, a warm smile not quite hiding his hard eyes.

"Well, why are you?" she asked, smiling back.

He stretched his legs. "I'm meeting a business partner. He...he was having problems with shipping our goods out."

"Really? What do you sell?"

"Oh, this and that. Mostly replica antiques." He smiled a secret smile. "There are a lot of customers who like to look like art collectors without spending the money. Not the best job, pandering to them, but it's a job."

Now she was actually interested. "What kind of antiques?"

"Mostly Egyptian. Some Greek, too."

"Any Chinese?" It was her habit, seeing how much people knew of Chinese history.

"Interested in your heritage?" The man smiled again, but this time his lips tightened quickly. "We have someone – a very good metalsmith – who we contract out to for Asian replicas."

"And what do you make?"

"Coins, small pots, figurines. The usual stuff."

She nodded, smiled once more and turned back to the window.

He knocked her elbow. "You still haven't told me why you're in the city."

"Just visiting," she said calmly, still looking out the window.

"No real plans?" _He just can't shut up_, she thought. "Saturday night's a bit late to get started on sightseeing, don't you think? You'd have been better off coming last night, stay the whole week end."

"I was busy last night." She frowned and clenched her fist. Friday night had not been a good night. The man noticed her frown and replied,

"Well, I'll stop bothering you."

Ten or so minutes later, the bus came to its first stop, and she rose. "Are you sure you want to get off here?" the man asked, and frowned at the outside buildings. "It's not the safest place."

"I'll be fine," she replied, stepped around him, and got off the bus.

* * *

It took two minutes to see her tail. Two men, oversized hoodies and bulges in their pants where she assumed they kept their guns. _Not a very inconspicuous disguise_. The clouds rumbled, and it quickly began to rain. She quickened her pace – and so did the men – till she reached an apartment building.

She fumbled for keys on the steps, but before she found the right one the men grabbed her from behind. "You can go softly or you can – well, it'll get ugly if you don't."

She smirked, but they couldn't tell. "Well, when you put it that way."

* * *

She was late for her job.

"You're late," David told her at the entrance. She glared back at him.

"I had no idea, David. Thank you for telling me that." She opened the door and left David outside, grumbling about how the boss always let her slide.

"Jo!" said the man at the desk, and handed her a folder and a bag. " 'Bout time you got here, the boss man is getting worried."

"Ran into some trouble, Ian, that's all. Nothing I couldn't handle." He buzzed her into the hallway with the elevators; she took the stairs. It was only one story up.

* * *

She entered by the emergency exit to the garage; all it took was one cut wire and the alarms – and the lock – were disabled. She walked past the neatly–parked convertibles and restored antique racecars and into the workroom. Stark designed all his basements the same.

Once the first light sensor lit up, she found the old computer still connected to the building's system and stuck a small USB into it. The speakers in the room crackled for a few seconds, then went silent. She smirked.

"You may have a human voice, Jarvis, but you're still a computer."

She left the garage the same way she had entered and crossed the street. She circled back to the main entrance after walking a couple blocks, but stopped at the little café across the street where people came to watch Iron Man fly to and from his tower.

She ordered a large hot chocolate, sat down at an outside table and took out of her backpack her book: _The Ultra Secret_, by the old British code breaker named Winterbotham.

"It's nice to see a young person reading," said an old man sitting nearby. He drank from his cup and added, when she looked up, "Too many people these days are glued to computer screens, phone screens." He scoffed, and smiled ruefully at her. "I'm glad some people prefer good old paper pages and stories to fancy technology."

She smiled back and replied, "Thank you." And she returned to her book.


	2. Preparation

Around nine PM the convertibles and shiny black limos began to arrive at Stark Tower. He may have designed the tower to be his private home, but with the California mansion gone he needed to find somewhere to throw parties. Iron Man or no, sober or no, Tony Stark was still Tony Stark, and he still threw parties.

She waited until Tony and Pepper made their appearances near the door to move. When they did, she entered the café building, threw away her cup, tipped the waitress, and circled back around to the garage entrance.

In California, when he only had two stories of building to use, Stark put his garage next to his complete workroom – design floor, mechanical tinkering, storage, the whole shebang. But in Stark Tower he had the top floors, so he split the difference. The cars and his mechanical tinkerings stayed in the garage, and his design floor and office found their way up to the top of the building.

But she wasn't interested in Stark's toys. She wanted...well, she wanted to finish the job, get paid, and go to sleep.

Stark had a private elevator from his garage to his office. Naturally you needed a special key to even get on the elevator, but Stark left Jarvis with the job of approving the keys; and she had control of Jarvis. Well, some of Jarvis, anyway.

The elevator took her up to Stark's private lobby – the floor with the balcony and the Iron Man landing pad. The one where the name STARK used to shine into the night, before a host of Chitauri knocked everything but the symbolic A off into the streets below. Half the time she thought Stark planned that on purpose, to brush away the common assumption that cared about himself ahead of anybody else.

Jarvis controlled the cameras here like it controlled the alarm system, the light sensors and the elevator. With one tap on her phone she deactivated the monitors for the doors out to the balcony.

She retreated to the far side of the balcony, close to the fallen logo. Now came the hard part. She took out the special gloves and the thick high–tech boots, sent a prayer up to the heavens, and started climbing up the side of Stark Tower.

* * *

When Stark created Jarvis, he purposefully separated it into two parts: serious functions and software. More specifically, she had control of the Jarvis that monitored security, set off fire alarms and sprinklers, and locked doors. She did not have control of the Jarvis that designed the Iron Man suits, spoke, answered calls, and controlled the interior and exterior lights.

To get control of flashy Jarvis, she had to be in its range: the top floors of Stark Tower. Soon the business part of the night – where Stark made publicly available his new earth–friendly power system – would be over, and the guests would move to the upper levels for the "reception". Even more unfortunately, in an hour or less Stark would be drunk enough to open the balcony to guests.

So she climbed to the ledge above the top floor of the building. Stark Tower, at its peak, had a semi–circle back wall that reached all the way to the ground and formed part of the main wall. Nestled in that semi–circle, and stacked above the balcony level, were Stark's personal floors. And above the last one was a flat ledge.

It took two hours, but she finally cracked flashy Jarvis's code. When she finished, she shut down the computer, repacked her backpack and prepared herself for the climb down.

* * *

"There you are!" exclaimed a drunken guest once she got back down to the balcony. The guest waved a champagne glass at her face. "I want a refill."

"I'm sorry, sir," she replied, "But my shift's over, and besides, I'm not a waiter. I help with the food, I don't serve it."

The guest kept waving the glass in her face. She finally snatched it up and walked inside.

"Throw this one away," she instructed a passing waiter. "I think someone – well, I don't want to know what they did." The waiter grimaced and took the glass. From there she walked into the back area of the lobby, where the extra drinks were stored.

"So how'd it go?" asked David. He looked younger in the catering uniform.

"It went fine. I need to use the service elevator."

"Stark doesn't have one. You'll have to use the public elevators like everyone else."

"He doesn't have a service elevator?" she hissed, and turned away when David shrugged. "Fine. I'll use the regular elevator." She handed him her backpack and took out her change of clothes and her phone.

"See you later," David replied.

She headed out into the lobby, called for the elevator and spent forty–two miserable seconds in a box with a drunken couple that needed to get a room.

Once out of the building, she circled around to the garage again and headed straight for the workroom. First she changed out of the catering uniform and into her own clothes; then she removed the USB drive. "Thank you, Jarvis," she said

She exited the garage and headed off into the night.


	3. Implementation

She stopped at a CVS for coffee and M that was her first mistake, though she didn't know it yet: the store camera. She wandered around New York City for thirty minutes and began to head back to Stark Tower. But on a side street, ten minutes before midnight, a man barreled into her and pinned her to the wall.

The man on the bus.

"What did you do?" he hissed. He held a gun to her head and knife to her throat, both pressed tightly against her.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" she exclaimed. _Ten minutes. Stay cool, stay cool_.

"You know what you did, bitch," he growled. "My men, you killed them. You think I wouldn't tell? You killed them and then you went to Stark Tower for four hours. What were you doing in Stark Tower, bitch?"

Things had gone too far, and he had left her hands and legs free. She twisted his gun arm up and away, and pushed forward against his weight. The man pulled the trigger, but by this time it was aimed at the sky. She head–butted him before he could move again, and stabbed him in the stomach.

_Eight minutes_.

He fell, but he wasn't dead yet. She knelt down next to him and slit his throat, clean and simple. Then she took the button he had dropped in her bag on the bus out, set it on the ground next to him, and ground it into the cement. It was a message to whichever gang he worked for: GPS tracking devices would not be tolerated.

She left the body there, knife in one hand and gun near the other, put on a trench coat, and walked off before the police could arrive.

_Six minutes_.

* * *

She reached the corner across from Stark Tower three and a half minutes later. She still had her knife, though she wiped it down.

She took out her phone and accessed the app named "Fireworks". She quickly made her selections, planning out three ten–minute programs.

_One minute_. David was supposed to meet her before they set it off. She looked around for him, but the street corner was still crowded from the restaurants and shops that closed at midnight.

_Thirty seconds_. She calmed herself and quietly scanned the area in front of Stark Tower.

_Ten seconds_. "There you are!"

She jumped. David stood in civvies too near to her for comfort. "I thought I wouldn't find you," he continued, smiling a goofy smile. He put his arm around her shoulder and sighed. "It sure it an impressive building."

"We clear?" she asked.

"All systems go," he replied. In her pocket, she pressed the GO button.

All the lights in Stark Tower shut off.

* * *

She threw the knife in the river. David disposed of their uniforms and the backpack; the laptop and climbing gear he took back to the office. He dropped her off at the bus station, said, "Congratulations," and drove off.

She got back home an hour later. She had walked across the bridge, found her bicycle still locked to the bike rack outside a mall, and biked home.

She opened the door to her room, stuffed her clothes in a plastic bag, and went to bed.


	4. Aftermath

She went to church the next morning. She could barely stay awake, so she skipped the reception afterwards and slept for a few hours back at home. Then she went for a jog, did some homework, and went out for dinner with friends.

Monday and Tuesday she attended class. On Wednesday her morning was free, so she skipped breakfast and jogged around campus.

When she returned to her dorm she saw flashing lights, red and blue, around the corner. She slipped around and entered her dorm from the back, packed her backpack, and called Karine.

She entered the dining hall from the lesser–used front entrance, the one whose doors were only opened during homecoming and family visiting week. She picked the lock and slipped into the cafeteria line.

"Hey," said Karine. She slipped into the line in front of her roommate. "I didn't understand everything you said on the phone."

"You remember my job, Saturday night?" she hissed. They picked up their trays.

"Yeah, and I remember you getting back at one in the morning tracking dirt through the bathroom."

"Well, I ran into some...trouble."

"Trouble like, job trouble or police trouble?" They collected their pizza and moved on to the soft drinks.

"Police trouble," she muttered, almost whispering. In her periphery, she saw a man in a suit talk to the security guard.

Karine exhaled. "This explains the cops outside. Do you need money?"

They left the line and walked to their table. "Anything you can spare, just to tide me over. Karine, I'm in big trouble."

Karine looked around and spotted the suit. "I'll leave it at the regular place."

"Thank you," her roommate replied. There were a couple other friends at their table already, trying to eat lunch before noon classes. Karine struck up conversation with them; her best friend ate in silence, waiting for the suits.

Two minutes later a suit clapped his hand on her shoulder. "Alexandra Cole?"

* * *

She sprang into action instantly.

The man who said her name she sucker–punched and threw across the table. The two suits behind him charged her and were immediately put on their backs; she shot one in the shoulder, the other in the arm, with their own guns, as a precaution.

Next were the uniformed cops, four of them. She grabbed her backpack from the ground, easily disabled the two closest officers, and ducked when the remaining two started shooting. She stuffed all the guns except for one into her backpack and aimed at the cops' legs from below the table. She was lucky the cafeteria was half–empty – she didn't want any more deaths; and when she shot the officers, she made sure to not hit the major blood vessels.

With the two last cops down, the only sound in the cafeteria was the dispatch from their radio. The other students still cowered under the tables. When a few of them began to rise, she shot three rounds into the far wall, and they hunched back down.

With one last glance at the room, she placed the cellphone jammer on a ledge and took the emergency exit out.

* * *

Thirty–six hours later she slipped into her dorm room via the window. Karine was gone, her bed stripped and her wardrobe empty; Alexa's things were gone too, but taken for evidence.

She knelt on the wooden boards in the dark and ran her hands across them. Finally she found the tiny metal latch and opened the hatch.

Inside were guns, knives, two changes of clothes and cards for three aliases. She quietly packed what she needed into another backpack. Then she opened the other floor compartment and withdrew a pack of $100 bills, and three $20 bills. She closed the compartments as quietly as she had opened them, and slipped back out the window. Third–floor dorms were a pain, but at least the cops weren't worried about someone slipping in

The $20 bills she'd leave at Karine's regular place; the $100 bills she'd use to get through the city.


	5. Explanation

She took a cab to her job.

Well, that wasn't quite right. She hired a high–end private car for the night under a false name, declined a driver, and avoided every camera she knew of as she circled the city. She parked thirteen blocks away, in metered parking. She fed the meter enough for an hour, and left the keys in the car. It was 7 PM.

She muscled past Hannah at the door, who protested and reported the intrusion into her earpiece. Ian shouted, "Jo! You can't go back there!" when she reached the door for the elevators. She glared back at him and waved her card at the red light; Ian was supposed to be surprised when in turned green and unlocked, but he wasn't. She crossed the hallway and opened the door to the stairs.

* * *

"Mr. Stark, I understand your dissatisfaction at how we conducted our test on your security system–"

"Look, Colonel Mustard–"

"Dahlberg, Mr. Stark."

"–Yeah yeah, Dahlberg, whatever. Skip the summary, I know why I'm upset. I didn't want it in the middle of my party–"

"The weakest point," the young woman at the door interrupted. Stark barely turned around, but once she took her seat next to him, he sneaked another look. "Hackers attack when and where you're weakest."

Dahlberg tensed, then sighed. "Jolene Barden, Mr. Stark."

"Are you the girl on the news?" he replied. She scoffed, but looked away. "The one who – who killed the businessman near my building. Right before you put on that light show."

She sighed, and said, "I killed three mob men that day. Two were low–level hustlers, and the third was a recruiter. He figured out I killed his men, and he held a gun to my head. I was almost late for my, as you say, 'light show'.

"All self–defense," she added, more confidently than she felt. Stark rolled his eyes; Dahlberg frowned. She grit her teeth. _Stay calm_.

* * *

"All right, well, give me my security report," said Stark eventually.

_Finally_. She unzipped her backpack. "The emergency exit from your garage is covered by an alarm, which is covered by Jarvis. The system also doesn't expect someone to enter from the emergency exit, so outside security is lax. It runs through one cable next to the door that can easily be cut." She handed the file to Stark, opened to the page with a picture of a small, gray wire in the evening sun.

"Jarvis controls everything in that building, just like it did at the California house. And just like in California, the weaknesses are the same."

"You've been there?" Stark leaned forward. She ignored him.

"Your system of lights works toward the outside exits, not from the outside. The outside sensors only activate if the closest sensors inside – or the driveway sensors – activate. The closest sensors inside only activate if the ones around the cars do. The ones around the cars only activate if the sensors in the workshop do first. Ergo, if neither the workshop nor the driveway sensors activate, nothing will."

Stark whistled. "So how did you not activate the workshop sensors?"

"I hacked into Jarvis via USB."

Stark frowned. "I use state–of–the–art cyber security."

She sighed. "This is your problem, Mr. Stark. You care only about the flashy parts of your system." She took the report out of his lap and flipped to the page with her diagram that broke down Stark's system. "Back when you first programmed Jarvis, you split it into two parts: security and software, essentially. Now, I understand why you did this – I would too, it makes programming and updating the damn thing easier – but in the more than ten years since you created Jarvis, you have woefully neglected the security part of the system. You may protect both parts of your system from outside control, but only your software Jarvis is as protected from inside attacks."

"What did you do for five hours?"

"Excuse me?"

Stark flipped the report back to the picture of the cable. "You took this in the evening. You did your little light show at midnight. What did you do in between that?"

"I read a book." Stark made a dismissive noise. She turned to face him. "You're a hacker too. You know how long it can take to hack a highly protected system. My program needed time to take hold of Jarvis. So, yes, I read a book until you started your party. The cafe across the street has an excellent view of Stark Tower's main entrance."

Stark sighed. "And then?"

"While you presented your green technology I reentered the garage and took your private elevator up to your private lobby. The Jarvis system that controls the lights and all its other flashy functions is better protected than the security system, so I needed to be where it was active – your top floors."

"Yeah, and I had a party going on."

"I climbed to the roof of the top floor."

Stark made a noise that sounded like disbelief. "Why? How?"

"Why? I needed access to your software system and I didn't want to get caught. How? Each floor has small ledges that stick out. All I needed was good climbing equipment. I hacked into software Jarvis from the roof."

"How did you get out?"

"I had a catering uniform. I put it on while on the roof and came down the side of the building to the edge of the balcony." With Stark's incredulous look, she elaborated: "I had rope."

"And you got out by looking like a caterer. Is that when you killed the third guy? The one the police want you for?"

She sighed. "I took a public bus into the city Saturday afternoon. Mob recruiters, they chat up a girl, then slip a GPS device into her pocket or bag. Then they call a couple grunt men, who snatch her.

"The first GPS I knew he slipped into my coat pocket. I knew those guys were coming; I even recorded it." She took a memory card out of her pocket. "I didn't find the second GPS until the recruiter ambushed me. He knew I'd been in Stark Tower and he had a gun to my head and a knife at my throat." She glared at Dahlberg. "What was I supposed to do?"

"You should have given the job to someone else!" Dahlberg exclaimed. "It was too high–risk for you."

She stared at him, openmouthed. Unbelievable.


	6. Finished

Simply unbelievable.

This was her last job, she'd sworn two years ago, watching the explosion outside of Atlanta on the news, the crash that she helped orchestrate. This was her last job, she told herself last Friday, attending Briana's memorial service. Last job, standing over two men's bodies on a quiet, run–down street in New York City.

Climbing Stark Tower in biting autumn wind.

Shooting four police officers.

"I – I was – I had the job!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't tell you, you just wanted it done! Mister _I don't care a whit for my people_, that's who you are. You don't care about risk! Don't go pretending you care about us street–runners, you can't fool me. Not after Atlanta," she spat.

"That was you?" Stark asked her, but he looked at Dahlberg. She ignored them both.

"You want the job done, mistakes covered up and money paid. You saw me kill all three of those men on the video I turned in that night, and, Stark, you know what he told me? 'Don't leave behind evidence next time.' If one of them had killed me you wouldn't have even cared, you would've assigned the job to Hannah!" Her voice cracked, but she continued. "Stark, you shouldn't have called him Colonel Mustard. This man," she pointed, "left two technicians, a street–runner and his client's _girlfriend_ for dead in Georgia, two years ago!"

"You have a contract!" Dahlberg interrupted.

"How much did you get paid for Atlanta, Dahlberg? Five mil? Twenty mil? This is a contracting firm, after all. The company gets paid no matter how screwed up it does the job. How much are you paying him, Stark, to hack into your precious Jarvis network?"

"You are bound to confidentiality!"

"Not anymore!" she fired back, and stood with her backpack. "I quit, and this time you won't get me back in!"

She swung around, towards the door, and came face–to–face with her mother.


	7. Memories

The label "mother" might have been stretching it, but she didn't know what else to call the woman.

It was her mother who paid part of her college tuition, who paid the application fees and for the train tickets. She had hired the tutors, paid the teachers and bought the house, the dog, and the social security number.

It was her mother who hadn't killed her when she was ten.

"Mom," she said, frozen.

"Sasha," her mother replied, "sit down."

Sasha did move: she stepped forward, and glared at the older woman.

"Aleksandra Avgustovna Nevskiy," her mother said, "I'm only saying it once more. Sit," she repeated, "down."

Sasha sat down.

* * *

_Ten years_, Sasha thought. _Ten years since Ukraine_.

It was easier to think of it as a place, a country halfway across the world, where high–school history teachers and corrupt politicians came from. Nazi massacres and oilfields.

Not the town that seemed frozen in the time of Stalin's five–year plans, not the abandoned Soviet facilities, not the long car rides and old frail tutors who would never answer her questions.

Not the autumn–colored field where he'd fallen, his blood spattered across the grasses and fallen leaves. Where the woman she would come to call "Mom" shot at the man who held a gun to the little girl's head from too far away to get a clean shot.

_But I'm not Russian_, she'd told herself afterwards, when the woman produced a new birth certificate. _I'm Ukrainian, I should have a Ukrainian name_. When she voiced the thought, the woman looked her dead in the eye and said, "You're Russian now. You need to speak Russian without that accent."

_I'm Russian, not American_, she thought to herself when the woman returned, five weeks later, carrying an American birth certificate, social security card, and passport. She packed her clothes and books into a bag and watched them burn in the yard of the old woman who took care of her.

The woman didn't say anything to the girl until hours later. Driving through Russian countryside, she looked over at Sasha's troubled face and said, "I'm not happy about this either, kid." In English.

She asked, "Then why?"

Natasha sighed. "Orders."


	8. Lockdown

Sasha stared at Dahlberg's desk, her face – and her mind – purposefully blank. Dahlberg stood up at the sight of the agent. "What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here!"

"Agent Romanov," Stark said to Natasha a half–second later. "I didn't want S.H.I.E.L.D. involved in this."

"They are now," she replied. "You're part of the Initiative, they keep track of you. They connected your light show to the three dead gang members. How do you think the police found Sasha so quickly?"

She looked at Dahlberg. "Get out, Kent."

Dahlberg crossed his arms and stayed where he stood. Stark started to say something, but quickly shut up. Sasha kept her eyes on the desk. Nobody said a word.

Somebody moved, Sasha couldn't tell who.

Natasha broke Dahlberg's arm. Sasha winced when she heard the scream, and Stark jumped out of his chair.

* * *

Natasha marched Dahlberg downstairs, showed her S.H.I.E.L.D. badge and ID, and ordered the offices cleared. She locked the doors from the inside once everybody left, and cut the power to the two floors.

She returned to the conference room where Sasha and Stark sat with a cellphone jammer in hand. "She probably cut the landlines too," Sasha told Stark. Natasha turned off the jammer, took out her phone, and dialed a number. Sasha recognized the dial tones.

"You need to get down here," said Natasha. She paused to listen to the person on the other end of her phone. "Well, get out of it. You need to be here. You know why," she lowered her voice. "You saw what she did."

Stark leaned over and whispered to Sasha, "How do you know Agent Romanov? Why'd you call her 'Mom'?"

"It's complicated," she replied. Stark rolled his eyes. Sasha made a split–second decision. "Have you ever heard of a Doctor Richard Klein?"

Stark frowned. "He worked with my dad on DNA testing machines back in the day."

"Right. Well, after that he pitched this idea for genetic mixing for supersoldiers and such. The CIA was doing it, the Soviets were doing it, so he thought, hey, S.H.I.E.L.D. will go for it too. But they didn't. Howard Stark specifically rejected the idea."

"Of course that wasn't the end of it."

Natasha ended her call. Sasha began to reply to Stark, but shut up when her mother walked to her. "I'm going downstairs," she told the younger woman. "_Behave_. Don't go anywhere."

"Yeah, yeah," mumbled Sasha. She and Stark watched Natasha leave the room and turn a corner to the stairs.

Sasha turned back to Stark. "No, it wasn't the end of it. After that Klein had this idea of collecting famous and talented people's DNA to try to find some gene that made them all so successful. This was back when everybody thought that DNA decided everything about a person.

"Everybody else was doing the same thing, of course – collecting DNA of geniuses and studying it for the special genius genes – but S.H.I.E.L.D. had the resources to get a lot of older DNA: Machiavelli, Peter the Great, Ching Shih–"

"Who?"

"Ching Shih. Pirate Lord of China. She was the most successful pirate in all world history." Stark stared at her blankly. "Have you never seen _Pirates of the Caribbean_?" She sighed. "_Anyway_, he was fired when S.H.I.E.L.D. discovered he was mixing DNA, like he had wanted to do originally. Then he went off the radar. Natasha's first assignment when she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. was to find him."

"She joined S.H.I.E.L.D. ten years ago."

"Eleven," Sasha corrected him. "And?"

"You're twenty," he pointed out.

Sasha didn't reply.

"Why do you call her 'Mom'?" he asked again.

Sasha stared out the window, into the office building across the street.


	9. Decisions

"What happened to Doctor Klein?" asked Stark eventually.

"Shot dead. In the forehead. Right here," she touched the spot right above her right eyebrow. "He moved to the Ukraine, before the Berlin Wall fell, and stayed there after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Natasha found him ten years ago."

"What she called you earlier–"

"Aleksandra Avgustovna Nevskiy."

"Yeah, that. That's your real name?"

Sasha hesitated. "It's Russian, which is close enough. Aleksandr Nevskiy was a prince of Kiev."

Stark nodded.

* * *

"Who's your mother? I mean, your real mother," Stark clarified.

"I don't have one," she said, slightly emphasizing _one_ on accident. _Damn it_.

Stark frowned.

* * *

"So how many?"

"Excuse me?"

"How many people's DNA? I think they're called donors."

She closed her eyes. "Four."

"And how many of them factor into your proficiency of hacking?"

"None of them. There are two donors, one male and one female, for any given gene, but genetics doesn't create ability. Klein...Klein thought you could just shove genes in and get a genius."

"You said this guy was smart?"

"I didn't. And it was the nineties."

Stark thought for a moment. "Why're you telling me all this?"

Sasha shrugged. "I never got to talk about it before. I might as well now, now that everything is out. And I don't know what S.H.I.E.L.D. will do with me, if I do what Natasha wants me to do. I guess it's an 'someone has to know my story' idea. I'm not in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s file about Klein. I have no paper trail for them to clean up. Natasha burned the Klein's filed about me, and she destroyed the house."

It had been less a house and more a bunker, and old Soviet one. When she asked about it once, Klein told her it was from World War Two, an old remnant of the patriotic war.

Natasha had told the girl to stay in her car while she destroyed the building, but Sasha knew how to get out: Klein had taught her to hotwire cars two years before. She stood in front of the building when Natasha came out of the front door, her bag free of the explosives she brought.

The woman didn't blink when she saw Sasha standing outside.

The explosion was incredible.

* * *

"So why do you call her 'Mom'?"

"It pisses her off," replied Sasha. That was the original answer, the first time she'd done it.

"She's not very fond of you," he observed. She shrugged.

"She broke protocol because of me. I'm a ten–year complication and if they found out..."

"Then why didn't she leave you in Russia?"

"_Ukraine_," she corrected him. "And she did leave me in Russia, for a month."

"What happened?"

"You mean, why did she bring me to America?" she asked, and shrugged. "Orders."

"But you said–"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know about me. But Natasha's first handler did."

"And who was that?"

"Me," the man behind them said. Stark and Sasha turned towards the doorway. The man stood in full gear, just behind the threshold; Natasha stood behind him, arms crossed.

"Hi, Clint," said Sasha.

* * *

The woman marched into the police station, ignored all the people around her, and went straight to the officers' desks. She dumped herself into a seat facing the highest–ranking cop on duty, and put her bag on the ground. The man looked up from his computer, startled.

Alexandra Cole raised her hands in surrender, and rolled her eyes as she spoke. "I'm here to turn myself in, blah blah blah."

It was 11 PM.


	10. Cleared

"She just turned herself in last night?" asked the Captain.

"Yes, sir," replied the arresting officer. "Well, not just that." He handed over blown–up print–outs of camera footage. "She also had a camera tape in her backpack. The techs say it would've been recording remotely." He hesitated. "From the tape, it looks like self–defense."

The Captain glanced up from the print–outs. "The tape could be faked."

"Yeah, but the time stamp's right. And," he added, and pulled out another set of photos, "the actions and timing matches perfectly with our footage. We couldn't tell based off what we had before, but with this..."

"It looks like self–defense," repeated the Captain. He wasn't even a year into his job; his predecessor had been sacked over the alien invasion. "What about audio?"

"Not very good," his officer said reluctantly. "The techs got some words. Umm, 'bitch'. He said that a lot. And he kept saying 'Stark Tower'. And he repeated something about his men getting killed–"

"You checked for homicides?"

"Yes sir, I checked, but nothing in any boroughs or surrounding counties. However...there was a 911 call on the south side of Manhattan. Some lady thought she saw two men jump a girl, but that the girl killed them both instead. Response time wasn't the greatest, so by the time someone got there, all three were gone."

The Captain narrowed his eyes. "A young woman gets jumped by two men and kills them, and a businessman whose accounts don't quite add up, finds her hours later in the middle of a back street, talking about his dead men."

"The device we found next to him might have been a GPS," the officer added. His Captain nodded.

"Looks like the gangs tried to recruit the wrong girl." He handed back the pictures. "Have you found a connection to Stark Tower?"

"No, I–" the officer cut himself off, and stared out the office window, into the main floor of the station. "I think I just did."

The Captain turned around, saw the suits, a man and a woman, and swore. "Not them again."

* * *

"Captain. I'm Agent Maxfield, and this is Agent–"

"I don't care who you are," said the Captain. "Why are you here?"

"Alexandra Cole," declared Maxfield, and she held up a piece of paper. "We're taking her."

"We have our own investigation–"

"It's self–defense, we all know that," the other agent cut in. "Jeremy Rizzoli was a frontman for the Tigers."

"Well, she's in the system now and we can't just make her appear out of thin air for you–"

Maxfield scoffed. "She hasn't left the building."

"We have paperwork–"

"Hey, ass–butts!"

The whole room fell silent.

Alexandra Cole leaned against a door on the other side of the room, arms crossed, handcuff–free. She smirked at the cops and nodded at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. "I'm right here."

The officer who arrested her turned, mouth agape. "How did you get out of the cell? The handcuffs–"

She scoffed. "I broke into Stark's tower and hacked into his whole network in eight hours. I think I can get out of a pair of handcuffs and a simple holding cell easily."

Agent Maxfield touched the gun at her hip. "I was assured personally that you weren't going to resist. Your–"

"She wasn't wrong," Alexa cut the other woman off. She spread her arms wide. "I turned myself in. I'm not going to renege on that now. I'm just speeding along the process. Plus the cell smelled like piss and marijuana. You should work on that," she told the Captain.


	11. Epilogue

Sasha Nevsky walked on the sidewalk downtown, her low heels making only a muted clicking noise. She turned a corner and barely spared a glance at the door that she passed. The door where she used to enter every day, until S.H.I.E.L.D. caught her. She had turned snitch on the shadowy contract firm, and sent Dahlberg and ten other employees to prison in return for a new job.

She walked past Times Square, where she, Briana, and Connor had gotten dead–drunk one night and almost blew an assignment.

She walked past the company that hired Karine after she graduated. She contemplated going in and saying hello – it wasn't as if her friend didn't know what she did now – but reminded herself: on the clock.

Agent Johnson had complained that Sasha always got the choice assignments. "It's just 'cuz you're some wacky experiment," he said, unoriginal as ever. "You got the special DNA so SHIELD think's you're halfway to superhero."

She couldn't think of a good response, so she told him to shut up in Ukrainian.

Johnson always complained. Clint had told him once that if he'd shut his cake–hole maybe he'd get better assignments.

Clint and Johnson were more similar than they wanted to believe.

Sasha stopped in front of the café.

There were different waitresses than last time. Last time was three years ago, she reminded herself. Of course there would be different waitresses. Still, she contemplated going inside and ordering a hot chocolate.

_On the clock_.

She walked across the street quickly, watching for cars. She hated New York City – there were always cars. Too many cars, not enough trees.

She walked around Stark Tower and down the back driveway. The emergency door had been repainted, to hide the redone security system. She waved her ID at the new scanner and the door opened.

"You got a '67 Impala," she called across the garage. "It's not your usual style, but I like it."

Stark stopped welding, took off his protective mask, and pointed it at her. "I'm gonna get you back someday for making me watch that show," he yelled back. "You better watch out."

Sasha smiled to herself and walked into Stark's workroom. "What's the new gadget?"

He held up the long metal sheet with tongs. "A physical window cover. There've been too many helicopters around the building lately for comfort, and the shaded windows aren't one–hundred–percent effective. See," he showed her, "The plates fold up at the top when they aren't needed, but when you want the window covered, you release this mechanism and the plates fall down and overlap almost vertically."

Sasha looked at Stark for a moment, to make sure he was serious. "Have you told Pepper about this yet?"

"No, it's gonna be a birthday present."

"Uhuh. Keep working on that," she said, and walked towards the elevator. "You'll be upstairs for the meeting, right?"

"You betcha," he shouted, put his mask back on, and ignited the welder. The elevator doors closed.

* * *

The elevator doors opened. She walked out into the lobby and took a second to enjoy the glass–pane view.

"Sasha!" called her mother. Sasha turned and walked away from the windows.

"Is he still downstairs?" Pepper asked.

"Yes, he's working on your birthday present," the young agent replied. "Blinds."

"What?"

"He is reinventing the window blinds," she clarified. "Well, I don't think he knows that they already _exist_, so technically he is inventing them right now..."

Pepper stared at Sasha, trying to figure out whether she was kidding. "He needs to get out more," she decided.

"Yeah," agreed Sasha. She noticed Natasha's impatient look, and placed her backpack on the table.

"The reports," she said, and took out the binders. She placed one at every spot at the table, and left the fattest one in the middle. "And the full paperwork."

"Thank you, Sasha," said Pepper.

"The incident report in full is in the back of the binders. There's also camera footage on the pages before that. Director Fury will be here in ten minutes. That should give Mr. Stark enough time to get out of his workshop." Sasha slung her backpack up, letting it hang from one shoulder, and walked towards the elevator.

"Sasha," called Pepper. Sasha stopped, turned slightly to see Ms. Potts.

"What are you doing after this?" asked Natasha.

"I was thinking of visiting a friend when she gets off work," Sasha said slowly. "I'm off the clock. That's okay, right?" she asked her mother.

"Why don't you stay here," Natasha suggested. "See the presentation."

"Director Fury–" Sasha started.

"Can kiss my ass." Natasha gave her daughter the old "let's–be–serious–here" look. "You've been in S.H.I.E.L.D. for two years, Coulson should be giving you better assignments by now." Sasha didn't move. "Aleksandra, sit down."

_It's about time_, she thought. She sat down across from her mother.


End file.
